Every Wednesday we take a real marketing story from the news and use it to explain one or two marketing concepts. This week it’s the Lufthansa Group, which has just launched its first advertising campaign aimed at everyday travelers. It’s a great way to understand brand architecture (how a company organizes its family of brands) and the role of brand touchpoints.
What Did the Lufthansa Group Actually Do?
On October 21, 2026, the Lufthansa Group started rolling out a consumer brand campaign called “Greatness is a Group effort.” According to the company, it’s the first campaign of its kind by an airline group anywhere in the world.
That might sound odd. Isn’t Lufthansa already a well-known airline? It is, but the Lufthansa Group is bigger than the Lufthansa airline. Under the group sit several airlines that fly under their own names, including Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, Discover Airlines and Air Dolomiti, along with ITA Airways, in which the group holds a stake.
Until now, travelers mostly saw the individual airline brands. The group was the company behind them, mainly talked about with investors and business partners. The new campaign is meant to change that.
The company describes the campaign as “the next step in positioning the Lufthansa Group as the company’s umbrella brand.” It follows a new brand identity unveiled in December 2025. As part of that refresh, aircraft from airlines that fly under another name now carry the words “Member of Lufthansa Group,” and the group brand has started appearing at lounge entrances.
Importantly, the individual airlines aren’t disappearing. Lufthansa says their own marketing will carry on in parallel, and each airline keeps its distinctive character.
What Is Brand Architecture?
Brand architecture is simply how a company arranges its brands and how they relate to each other. When a company owns more than one product or business, it has to decide: do we put one name on everything, give each one its own name, or do something in between?
To make this easier, let’s use a simple example. Imagine a family business that owns three cafés in the same town. One is a quick takeaway coffee spot near the train station, one is a relaxed brunch café by the beach, and one is a bakery café in the shopping strip. How should the owners name them?
There are three common approaches.
A Branded House
In a branded house, one master brand goes on everything. Our café owners could call all three shops “Harbour Coffee.” Customers would know straight away that the three are connected, and any goodwill built at one café helps the other two.
This is close to what we call a family brand. It’s efficient, because every bit of advertising builds the same name.
A House of Brands
In a house of brands, each business gets its own name and customers may never realize they’re linked. The owners might call them “Platform One Coffee,” “Sandy Toes Brunch” and “The Crumb.” Each can target a different type of customer with its own personality.
This is the individual brand approach. It gives each brand freedom, and a problem at one shop is less likely to hurt the others. The downside is that each name has to be built from scratch.
An Endorsed Brand
The in-between option is an endorsed brand. Each business keeps its own name, but a parent brand appears alongside it as a kind of stamp of approval. Our owners could keep “Sandy Toes Brunch” and add a small line on the sign: “A Harbour Coffee café.”
So which approach is the Lufthansa Group moving toward? Think about that “Member of Lufthansa Group” lettering on the aircraft. SWISS is still SWISS and Austrian is still Austrian, but the group name now sits alongside them. That looks a lot like an endorsed brand approach, with the group acting as the umbrella over brands that keep their own identities.
For more on these choices, see our post on the four brand strategies.
Why Would a Company Promote Its Umbrella Brand?
If the individual airlines already have loyal customers, why spend money advertising the group?
The answer is in the benefits that only the group can offer. According to Lufthansa, bringing its airlines and hubs together in one network gives customers more choice, more connections and more flexibility. Travelers can also use a shared lounge network, shared loyalty benefits and common digital services.
None of these benefits belongs to one airline. A traveler booked on Austrian may not realize that the group’s network, lounges and loyalty benefits stretch well beyond that one airline. The umbrella brand gives the company a way to explain that bigger offer.
Back in our café town, imagine Harbour Coffee launches a loyalty card that works at all three shops. A customer who only ever visits the station café might never hear about it, because “Platform One Coffee” has no obvious link to the brunch café or the bakery. Adding “A Harbour Coffee café” to each sign gives the owners a simple way to say: these shops belong together, and you get more by using all of them.
The group’s chief commercial officer, Dieter Vranckx, put it this way: “By bringing together leading airlines under one strong umbrella, we create a unique travel ecosystem of global reach, premium experiences and digital innovation.”
There may also be a longer-term reason. The group keeps adding airlines. As Aviacionline reported, it plans to increase its stake in ITA Airways, and it has also opened the way for TAP Air Portugal to join. A strong umbrella brand can make it easier to bring new airlines into the family without asking travelers to forget names they already know.
Where Do Brand Touchpoints Come In?
A brand touchpoint is any point where a customer comes into contact with a brand. For an airline, that includes the website and app, the check-in desk, the lounge, the aircraft, the cabin crew and even the boarding pass.
The Lufthansa Group isn’t relying on a single TV ad. The company says the campaign will be rolled out gradually across the touchpoints of each airline’s customer journey, appearing on digital channels, on social media, in lounges, at airports and on board.
Why does that matter? Because an umbrella brand only means something if customers notice it during the journey. Seeing “Member of Lufthansa Group” on a plane, walking past the group name at a lounge entrance, and then using shared loyalty benefits all reinforce the same message: this airline is part of something bigger.
Our café owners would do the same thing on a smaller scale. The “A Harbour Coffee café” line would go on the signs, the cups, the loyalty card and the receipts. Each touchpoint is cheap on its own, but together they teach customers that the three shops are connected.
What Could Go Wrong?
Let’s think like a brand manager for a moment. Linking brands together has risks as well as benefits.
- Bad news can spread across the family. If one airline has a run of delays or poor service, travelers may now connect that experience to the whole group.
- The individual brands could become less distinct. If customers start seeing every airline as “just Lufthansa,” some of the personality that made each one appealing could fade.
- The promise has to match the experience. If a campaign promises a smooth journey across the group, but a traveler finds the lounges, apps and loyalty benefits don’t work well together, the umbrella brand could disappoint.
The same goes for Harbour Coffee. If the bakery serves a terrible coffee, the “A Harbour Coffee café” sign means the station café and the brunch café might share the blame.
How would we know if the campaign worked? We could survey travelers before and after to see whether more of them know that the airlines belong to one group, and whether that knowledge makes them more likely to book with group airlines or use the shared loyalty benefits.
A Question to Think About
Pick a company you buy from that owns several brands, such as a supermarket group, a car maker or a fashion retailer. Does it use a branded house, a house of brands or endorsed brands? And as a customer, would you behave any differently if you knew those brands were all part of one family?
